The present invention relates to a decoloring apparatus for a decolorizable image forming material.
In recent years, the amount of various kinds of information has significantly increased by spread of office automation, and so the level of information output has also increased. The information output is represented by display output and hard copy output from a printer onto paper sheets. The display output, however, requires a large scale circuit board in a display unit. This brings about problems of portability and cost. Regarding the hard copy output, a large quantity of paper as a recording medium is being consumed with increase in the information output amount. Therefore, the hard copy output is expected to be a problem with respect to conservation of natural resources. In addition, recycling of paper sheets once printed by a printer or a copying machine is expensive, since much of a bleaching agent and water are required for the recycling and consumption of electric power is enormous. Under such a situation, it is considered to decrease consumption of paper substantially by using decolorizable image forming material to print information on a paper sheet, restoring a blank sheet of paper by decoloring the formed image, and reusing the paper sheet.
Heretofore, ink which can be decolored on heating has been proposed in, for example, Published Unexamined Japanese Patent Application No. 7-81236. The ink includes a color former such as a leuco dye, a developer, and a organophosphoric compound having a decoloring power.
When such image forming material is used, however, decoloring can be done insufficiently and, as a result, a paper sheet is hard to return to the blank state. For this reason, decolorizable image forming material cannot have been put into practical use.
It is, accordingly, an object of the present invention to provide a decoloring apparatus which can easily decolor a decolorizable image forming material and can maintain the decolored state stably, thereby making it possible to reuse paper sheets.
According to an aspect of the present invention, there is provided a decoloring apparatus for an image forming material comprising means for bringing a solvent into contact with an image forming material formed on a paper sheet and containing a color former, a developer and a decolorizer, and means for removing a residual solvent from the paper sheet.
According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a decoloring apparatus of an image forming apparatus comprising means for decoloring the image forming material by bringing a solvent containing a decolorizer into contact with the image forming material formed on a paper sheet and containing a color former and a developer, and means for removing a residual solvent from the paper sheet.
According to still another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a decoloring apparatus of an image forming apparatus comprising means for decoloring an image forming material by heating the image forming material formed on a paper sheet and containing a color former, a developer and a decolorizer to a temperature higher than the melting point of the decolorizer, and means for roughening the surface of the image forming material remaining on a surface of the paper sheet.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objects and advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained by means of the instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out hereinafter.